Federal broadcast hall monitor Brendan Carr has taken his latest “when all you have is a hammer, threaten to yank people off the national airwaves” smack at running the FCC this week, hopping on social media on Saturday to issue a new series of threats to American broadcasters. Specifically, Carr is mad that Donald Trump is mad about current media coverage of the United States’ ongoing bombing campaign in Iran, with Carr sharing a Truth Social post in which Trump was mad about newspapers making things seem kind of dire in the Middle East right now. And, sure, you could make the point that Carr has no oversight over what newspapers print, on account of the Commission he heads having no power over that thin, pale substance we call paper. But that would mean you were letting logic getting in the way of a good threat, and that’s simply not Carr’s style.
Specifically, the FCC chairman wrote—in that “Sure would be a shame if your restaurant burned down on account of not giving us a big sack of unmarked bills” tone he’s so fond of while operating as a federal regulator—that “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
Carr has been banging this “public interest” drum for a while now, mostly because threatening to withhold broadcast licenses over that kind of thing is one of the only judgment-call-based regulatory powers the FCC actually has. Those licenses, to be clear, are granted to individual stations, not networks like ABC, CBS, or NBC, and are handed out on an 8-year renewal cycle—making station owners especially vulnerable to federal pressure, something that’s become readily apparent under Carr’s current tenure. The companies that own the big broadcast networks do own some of the stations that carry their content, especially in large urban markets. But way more are owned by big conglomerates like Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcasting Group—who, not coincidentally, were the folks willing to fall in line very quickly when Carr began making some very similar noises about Jimmy Kimmel Live! last year.
The administration’s war on the media has gotten a lot of focus in the two weeks since the United States began bombing Iran, with Secretary Of Defense Pete Hesgeth publicly salivating over CNN (which, as a cable network, is mostly out of Carr’s sphere of influence) ending up in the hands of Paramount’s David Ellison, and Trump himself putting out a big bingo card touting all his “wins” over the media earlier today—including an insanely unflattering caricature of Carr himself as the administration’s “attack dog.” (Trump also claimed credit for getting Stephen Colbert taken off the air, cheered about numerous network anchors losing their jobs, and pointed toward CNN’s forthcoming “New ownership” as victories for himself, because some days, you’ve got to take your victories where you can.)
Although he’s opened at least a few “investigative actions” into his enemies in the world of talk TV, Carr has generally been a bit more squirrely about actually trying to use the FCC’s authority to directly impose political judgments on the nation’s broadcasters. He’s much more prone to using a still-threatening, but slightly less overt, approach, like the one outlined in the Twitter post today. After all, if you’re merely “suggesting” that people subject to your regulatory authority comply in advance and “correct course,” that doesn’t look quite as much like authoritarian censorship. Right?
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